Dirty little logger function for WordPress (mu-plugins)

wp-logger.php

/**
 * By pass the need to define up to three constants, WP_DEBUG, WP_DEBUG_LOG
 * and WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY by setting the error_log ini value so that any time
 * logger() is called data is written to debug.log.
 */
ini_set('log_errors', 1);
ini_set('error_log', WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/debug.log');


/**
* Takes an arbitrary amount of arguments, the first of which
* should typically be an identifying message or key marker 
* that you can use to identify your output withing the debug.log
* file.
*/
if ( ! function_exists('logger') ) {
    
    function logger() {

        $args = func_get_args();
        $msg  = array_shift($args);

        if ( is_array($args) || is_object($args) ) {

            $data = array_merge(array('message' => $msg), $args);

            if ( in_array(':export', $args) ) {

                ob_start();

                var_dump($data);

                $data = ob_get_clean();

            }

            error_log( var_export($data, true) );

        } else {

            error_log($args, true);

        }

    }

}